


One Hundred Minutes of Solitude

by gardnerhill



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Blair Sandburg: Shaman, Cultural Appropriation, Gen, Shaman!Blair, Spirit Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 06:30:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3681540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair saves his own ass – his own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Hundred Minutes of Solitude

There were no two ways about it, Blair thought grimly as he tested his restraints, his eyes straining in vain to cut the pitch‑blackness of the stifling vault in which his sadistic kidnapper had just locked him ‑‑ he was going to have to make a new set of friends. He'd hardly ever had days like this before he'd taken to associating with the Cascade Police Department ‑‑ specifically, with the iron‑jawed detective he'd acquired as a test subject for his dissertation.

Sure, occasionally he'd been the target of a stream of profanity fromsome kid who'd had a bone to pick about his grades ‑‑ his invective making it painfully clear that Professor Sandburg was the first teacher who'd ever penalized Junior for not studying. He'd also once been arrested and had spent the night in a holding cell with a group of other students protesting the U.S. involvement in the Gulf War. Naomi had nearly burst with pride when she'd come to bail him out the next day; they'd traded jail stories on the way home.

There had been that nearly‑fatal run‑in with outraged Papuan tribesmen a couple of years ago ‑‑ only true human beings were allowed on the site of the ruined temple ‑‑ but Blair had literally kept his head by agreeing to be adopted into the tribe. He still corresponded with Akhe' and Nolowa, and paid a reliable trader to send them regular gifts of cotton clothing, shells, monkeys, tobacco and pigs; his step‑parents were the envy of the village for having such a thoughtful and wealthy son. Every year Blair received a letter painstakingly dictated to the trader by Akhe', listing the names of all the eligible young girls eager for a husband who could provide such a handsome bride‑gift. Mothers...

So there had been incidents here and there, spotted through an interesting life. But ever since he'd taken up with Detective James Ellison, Blair Sandburg's life had been growing more interesting than was comfortable, nearly on a weekly basis.

Blair managed to reach back with his fingers and feel the bonds holding his wrists behind his back. He snarled. Plastic ties, not rope.Thin, and unbreachable without a good pair of scissors or a knife‑blade. And, unfortunately, his captor had been smart enough to pat him down and remove sharp objects before locking him in this safe. And even if he could free his hands, what could he do to free himself from a bolted safe door?

Jim Ellison seemed to have a lot of enemies that kept tracking him down to get even ‑‑ usually by threatening the person closest to him. And since Blair was usually the person physically closest to the detective... In less than a year Sandburg had become an expert on being threatened at gunpoint, kidnapped, and used as a bargaining chip. (Now he knew why Dick Grayson ditched the Batcave to become his own costumed crimefighter, Nightwing.) Add to that the unusually high number of armed psychos running around the Pacific Northwest ‑‑ was Cascade the national depository for out‑patients or something? ‑‑ and perhaps Sandburg could be forgiven for not having 100% of his attention on grading papers by the time he made his frazzled way to campus.

All this aggravation, mind you, was completely separate from the Sisyphean task of taking a hunk of raw pig‑iron and trying to hammer a Sentinel out of it. Simple observation of this physical embodiment of his life's work had naturally metamorphosed into teaching ‑‑ it was what Blair did for a living, after all. But there were days when he'd gladly accept a roomful of lazy students or a tribe of angry headhunters in exchange for Jim Ellison.

 

For all his stoic sense of duty Ellison was remarkably uninterested in developing his gifts, more comfortable with the use of conventional police methods or just plain brute strength. His lifelong independence chafed furiously at the necessity of a Guide to help him adjust to his unwanted abilities, and he kicked at any hint that he'd been gifted for a special reason. Blair now understood how God must have felt every time Moses or Job stammered out some chicken-shit excuse and ran away. If only he could make a giant salmon swallow Jim the next time he ducked out of his experiments to go fishing.

 

At times it was enough to make Sandburg want to go back to the purely academic study of ancient Sentinels and leave his bullheaded pupil to figure out his abilities on his own, maybe occasionally jolting him out of the zone‑outs as a favor...

 

Hell, it was all academic if he didn't get out of here before suffocating.

Blair stared in despair into the blackness of his vault. What good did he do if he just kept getting kidnapped like this? Every time Jim had to rescue him from some perilous situation it increased his liability as a police observer, and he'd soon be expected to stay away from the station for his own safety. And what was the point of it all, besides an academic paper that no one would read, and a professorship important only to himself?

And where was Jim? Blair couldn't imagine Jim not rescuing him any more than he could imagine a glass falling upward if he let go of it. But this rescue would be cut very fine. He was in a safe, he'd clearly seen the elaborate combination lock and handle on the door as he was shoved inside. This thing was just big enough to hold him in this painful squatting position; it was about the size of a dungeon oubliette. But unlike an oubliette, there was no grille at the top to allow air into the tiny pit for the prisoner. Sandburg knew there wasn't enough air in the safe for a half-hour of regular breathing. He might as well have been swallowed by a giant salmon himself for all the air and light in here...

Blair stared into the darkness.

The belly of the fish. The belly of the fish.

That was the phrase used to denote a symbolic journey, an inner journey. The journey made in the mind rather than on foot, the journey toward enlightenment. The Shaman's Journey, as opposed to the Hero's Journey. The Hero's Journey achieved things; the Shaman's Journey changed things.

In the dyad he and Jim Ellison formed, Jim was obviously the Hero ‑‑ a reluctant hero bitching about his training, but nevertheless that was his role. That would make Blair the Shaman. He snorted at the thought, but there was too much anthropological evidence to dismiss the description. He was the teacher of a special member of the community (the community in this case being the Cascade PD), he was different in his style of hair, adornment and clothing from the rest of the community, and he eschewed the community's usual method of solving problems (fists, guns and spectacular acts of bravery) in favor of a more cerebral and spiritual method. All earmarks of a shaman ‑‑ literal earmarks, considering the number of double‑takes his earrings got at the station...

By now the kidnapper, no doubt some old "friend" of Ellison's, wouldhave contacted the police via some bragging phone message or cryptic note to Jim: I've got your partner, not enough air, if you want to seehim alive, blah blah blah. Jim would go nuts and run around beatingpeople up in that world outside, that parallel universe that was completely separate from the world inside this safe, and inside Blair Sandburg's head. Outside was the Hero's province; the Shaman's province was within.

How often had he lectured Jim on establishing control of one's own innate abilities?

Blair wasn't helpless; he had choices. He turned them over in his mind.

 **1)He could waste this bit of air in a panicked struggle against his bonds and the bolted door, and suffocate within the hour.** Unimaginative, and undesirable; it was unworthy of someone with Blair's brains, and Jim would probably hold it against him.

 **2) He could sit here like Lois Lane doing her nails and wait for Jim to free him ‑‑ again.** Harmless, but humiliating. Plus, Jim wouldeventually get sick of rescuing his teacher, and stick Blair in a Witness Protection cage or force him to do something equally hideous and unspeakable, like carry a gun. Jim Ellison was Blair Sandburg's Blessed Protector ‑‑ and he was such a mother hen that Blair often wished he wasn't quite so blessed. If Jim had been this bad with his ex‑wife, Blair could understand why a fellow control‑freak like Carolyn would have left him. Of course, Sandburg's unfortunate propensity for getting kidnapped by Ellison's enemies did tend to lend substance to Jim's clucking.

Or **3) He could attempt to reach inside his own mind and find his own solution to his mental turmoil.** It would help pass the time and regulate both his breathing and metabolism, and actively help Jim in his own rescue. He might even discover a few things in his subconscious that would be useful for his dissertation.

Three sounded like a win‑win situation. At the very worst, it would prolong his survival ability and give Jim extra time in which to find him. And a grinning Jim forcing him to take lessons at the police shooting range was a far better outcome than a stone‑faced Jim scattering his ashes in the woods.

Young Prince Siddhartha's greatest battle had been won by him sitting under a bodhi tree for days and nights, meditating, while the forces of evil battled for conquest of his mind and spirit. At the end of that climactic spiritual victory, the former ruler truly deserved his new title of "Blessed" ‑‑ _Buddha_.

There wasn't enough room in the vault to form the lotus position, so Blair settled for a slightly more comfortable squat. He'd prefer his hands free, but one couldn't have everything. He began to go through the steps learned at his mother's knee to achieve the core of mental and spiritual stability that had stayed him through a geographically unstable childhood. Relax, grow calm from the center outward, a lotus floating in a pond stilling the ripples; take a slow breath, hold it, let it slowly infuse your blood cells, dispersing through your serenely detached physical body, your soul shining from the center of that lotus jewel‑bright, hail the jewel in the lotus, hail the jewel in the lotus...

He didn't know how much real time passed. It was like sinking into a deep calm pool, like the twilight time between going to bed and going to sleep. Perhaps he did sleep; perhaps it was a twilight dream he saw unfold before him rather than a conscious alteration of his mind.

The pitch‑black wall before him gradually grew in brightness and clarity before him, and then wasn't a wall any more. It was a corridor of stone lit by torches set into wall sconces that looked like human arms and hands. The floor crawled with hissing snakes, some of which glowed like neon tubes or reactor accidents.

He was standing upright and looking down the snake‑infested corridor, freed of his prison and his restraints in this dream‑scape. And despite the snakes, Blair Sandburg was conscious of an overwhelming desire to explore that corridor.

Follow where your mind leads. Besides, it would be something to write down in his diary besides the occasional "Kidnapped AGAIN," or "Canceled the date ‑‑ she was working with the kidnapper." Or the far more frequent "Going to kill Ellison."

Blair reached for a torch to take with him down the dream‑corridor. He stared at his sleeve as he realized he was wearing a leather jacket ‑‑brown leather, somewhat dusty looking. He was also wearing a hat; he took it off and looked at it. It was a dusty brown fedora. His tongue now in his cheek, Blair reached down with his left hand, and only nodded as he felt the expected coil of braided leather at his hip. The holster at his right hip held a pistol. He frowned at having a gun on him. That didn't feel right. For now, though, he let it be.

Setting the fedora back on his head, Blair took up a torch from the nearest human‑hand sconce and began to make his way through the nest of snakes on the ground. The creatures hissed and writhed around him, and he had to pick his way carefully; he didn't want to hurt them any more than he wanted to get bitten. Unlike the avatar he had assumed, Blair Sandburg did not suffer from ophidiphobia. Now if it had been ‑‑ no, no, don't give his subconscious any ideas. Snakes, just snakes. Snakes. Some of them glowing brighter than the torch, in many colors, coiling and writhing around each other, almost braided together...

Acting on an inner impulse, Blair put the torch back in an empty sconce, then hunkered down and just stared at the glowing, twisting snakes.

Naomi had taken Blair to a psychic friend of hers for a colors‑reading when he'd been a teenager. The colors you chose were supposed toreveal things about your personality, your temperament, your future.What were the colors he'd chosen again? Green, white, blue, orange. He forgot what significance they held according to the psychic, but he remembered the colors.

The snakes here were all sorts of colors.

Green... white... blue... orange.

There. An orange‑and‑white striped rattlesnake hissing and facing off against a cobra, a blue cobra with a green hood.

Carefully Sandburg reached both hands out to the preoccupied duelists, gauged distance and speed, and in a second stood, a snake held securely by the head in each of his hands.

The snakes hissed and bared their fangs and coiled their psychedelic bodies around Blair's jacketed forearms; but Blair did not loosen hisgrip or let go. He turned both reptile heads to face him and glared into four slit‑pupilled eyes. "Now listen. I don't know where the hell I am or where I'm going, but you're part of it so you're coming with me, both of you."

Immediately the serpents stopped hissing and writhing and were still in his hands.

"You're brave," said the striped snake. "You didn't fear two poisonous snakes. That's very heroic."

"You stopped to think," said the blue cobra. "You thought in terms of spirit and dream rather than of heroism. And you picked the correct ones." His green hood was still flared, but now it seemed soothing rather than a threat.

Green...something about the color green...his studies... Well, he'd remember or figure it out eventually.

Blair opened his hands, and both snakes immediately slithered up his arms to coil around his shoulders like fluorescent epaulets. The bright light they gave off was enough for him to forego the torches. It was just as well, for in the next moment the torches vanished, as did all the other snakes on the ground; it was clear that they'd served their purpose once Blair had made his choice. It was just him and his two obedient serpents in a long dark tunnel.

"Now what?" said Stripes into his right ear.

Blair shrugged. "I keep going, and see what happens next."

"Linear thought," Green‑hood hissed derisively into his left ear. "That's not like you."

Of course the cobra would object to linear thought ‑‑ it was on the side of the body governed by the right side of the brain, the holistic, artistic side. Green‑hood was right.

Blair must have been hanging around Jim too long ‑‑ Ellison was so linear it was a wonder he had two other dimensions. The test subject was starting to alter the teacher.

The cobra had been impressed that he'd stopped to think. All right, stop and think. This wasn't an adventure ride or a video game, going from thrill to thrill, overcoming obstacles; this was a dream‑scape. If he was careful he might be able to control the dream, and bring himself out with a way to free himself. He had the snakes, now what?And what would he do if a real danger presented itself to him, one he'd be tempted to respond to in kind?

Heroes responded with weapons. Shamans did not. He had to think his way through this place, not fight his way through. So, to remove temptation...

At once Blair drew his pistol and tossed it behind him, where it vanished into the place where the snakes and torches had gone. Hestarted to do the same with the bullwhip, then stopped and left it where it was. A coil of leather rope was useful for more than just hurting people.

"Are you sure you should have done that?" Stripes said anxiously from his right side, from the left side of the brain. The cobra said nothing.

"Not completely," Blair said. He was nervous. But he wasn't a gun person. The last time he'd held a gun ‑‑ no, no, don't think of that, look at the tunnel, figure out where to go, whether down the corridor‑‑

Or down the hallway branching off from the corridor. Down any of the hallways that now branched off and twisted away from the hall. And from there, down any of the branching tunnels from any of the twisting halls. The very corridor itself twisted off and branched and was no longer straight. Now, along the chiseled stone of the walls, were painted brown‑skinned Egyptian‑like people, bulls, and images of a double‑headed axe.

Bulls plus Egyptian influence equaled Minoan Crete. The double ax wasthe _labyris_. Which meant that Indiana Sandburg was not in a single straight corridor any more, but in the House of the Ax ‑‑ the Labyrinth.

And where there was a Labyrinth, there was...

He heard breathing ‑‑ heavy snorting breaths ‑‑ from somewhere in this maze of tunnels. The sounds were coming closer, and he couldn't pinpoint the hallway from which they were coming.

The Minotaur, the monster who lived in the Labyrinth and who, every seven years, devoured seven youths and seven maidens sent as tribute from conquered Athens. The head of a bull and the body of a man.

Blair gave a loud snort himself, and continued to study the decorated corridors at leisure, completely unafraid of the ominous sounds; he'd already had plenty of experience dealing with a bull‑headed man. Were those Egyptian hieroglyphics, or Mayan? Maybe the key to leaving the Labyrinth was written on the walls. Damn, he wished he had his prized rubbing from the Rosetta Stone ‑‑ his knowledge of Coptic was atrocious.

"Shouldn't you find the Minotaur and fight him?" Stripes asked nervously.

"Why?" asked Blair. "He isn't bothering me."

The snorting, grunting sounds grew louder and louder, approaching Blair. It was impossible to tell from which tunnel the sounds came.

"He's about to," Stripes hissed.

And there he was, standing before Blair, filling the space between him and the nearest tunnel entrance. A magnificent monstrosity; a body like Schwartzenegger's, a perfect fit in size and musculature to the giant black-haired bull's head, crowned with the wicked points that had meant doom for so many Cretan bull‑leapers. The Minotaur threw back his head and bellowed; his hands tightened into canned‑ham‑sized fists; his eyes glowed red.

"Fight him, kill him, fight him, kill him!" Stripes babbled in terror.

Green‑hood was still and silent, but its cobra body was tense.

Fight him, kill him? Blair couldn't, certainly not with just his fists and a bullwhip. Besides, that was the Hero's response. What was the Shaman's response? How did he truly want to respond to this?

The way Blair had wanted to respond since childhood, when he'd first read the story of Theseus and the Minotaur and had felt sorry for the poor misconceived creature trapped in cruel King Minos' maze.

Blair looked right in the monster's beady red eyes as the giant loomed over him. "How'd you like to help me find a way out of here?" he asked.

The creature halted and stood stock still, silent, staring at the fedora'd intruder. Its giant fists unclenched and the big hands hung loosely at its sides. It cocked its giant bull's head and made a sound like an inquisitive grunt. But there was yearning in that grunt.

Blair nodded. Freedom from this wretched Labyrinth ‑‑ the one thing that would be sweeter to the Minotaur than a young man's flesh. "I mean, you know the Labyrinth better than anyone, right? And maybe you can figure out this writing on the wall." Blair indicated the hieroglyphics. "Maybe this is the key to getting out of here. Can you read this?"

The big bull head shook back and forth in a negative. A single tear rolled down the hairy cheek from one red eye.

Blair should have known. King Minos wanted this monster child of his faithless wife and Poseidon's bull hidden away and forgotten, not given even the education merited by a royal bastard. Poor guy ‑‑ it was so much like watching big bruiser Jim made helpless by a zone‑out that Blair dared to pat one brawny shoulder, the way he'd comfort his distressed pupil. "It's okay, man. We'll get out of this. We'll figure something out. So, which way is inward?" All they'd have to do was go in the other direction.

The Minotaur rumbled, and turned to point to one corridor. Then another, then another, then another. He pointed to them all. Another tear rolled down the bull's jowl.

"All of them?" Blair said incredulously. " _All_ the passages lead inward?"

A nod, and a sad bull's grunt from the giant.

Oh, great. M.C. Escher must have designed this Labyrinth. There was no escape ‑‑

Escape? From what? From a maze within his own mind? Blair tossed his head upward in self‑exasperation.

Travel _outward_ wasn't the point to this, was it? He was taking this too literally. This wasn't a hero escaping the Labyrinth after slaying the Minotaur, going out to free the captives and sail away from Crete‑‑ this was a shaman's voyage _inward_ , toward enlightenment. This was probably just his mind's way of laying down a symbolic track for him to follow.

And if anyone knew the way inward in a Labyrinth...

"Listen, could you show me the way to the center?" Blair asked the Minotaur.

The bull‑headed man grunted and nodded again. But he cocked his head, looking confused.

"Okay. Now I know this sounds crazy, 'cause you've been here ever since ‑‑ well, forever. But once we get to the center ‑‑ I think we'll be able to find a way out. For both of us. Will you trust me?" He held out his hand.

His hand disappeared in the giant hand that engulfed it. A gentle rumble came from the Minotaur ‑‑ the happy sound of a peaceful bull. Blair smiled and felt peaceful himself. How often, as a child reading the Greek myths, had he longed to help the Minotaur escape his cage? Now he had a chance to repay the many hours of reading pleasure this beast and his cohorts had given him.

Without hesitation the Minotaur let go Blair's hand and turned down one particular corridor; as Blair followed him with the same lack of hesitation, all the other corridors vanished at once, as had the torches and the other snakes.

Blair felt Green‑hood relax on his shoulder and sensed the cobra's unspoken approval of his actions. By now he knew that of the two glowing snakes, the cobra was his mentor. Stripes was his Hero's Advocate, there to put up in glowing colors that which he should _not_ do. And the surer he got of his surroundings, the more he internalized what he was to do, the less the cobra spoke. And the more comforting it was to see its flared green hood.

Green. Green is...green is...

The twists and turns of the maze loomed around him and passed him and were behind him; once again the walls were dark and undecorated, unlit save for his glowing snakes. They seemed to be proceeding downward. Blair followed the broad back of the Minotaur, thinking. Descent; center; darkness.

Darkness? But it was so. His snakes were fading. He was descending into darkness. Would they leave him entirely, leave him stumbling in the dark?

The thought of losing that green hood ‑‑ losing the green ‑‑

Don't panic. Don't panic. If he panicked he'd hyperventilate, snap out of his trance, suck all the air out of his prison, and he would die. And that was very bad ‑‑ but what was worse was that if he died, Jim would be the one left stumbling in the dark, Guide‑less. One zone‑out during a police shoot‑out and Jim Ellison was a dead man. A waste of a good cop and a living Sentinel, a waste of a priceless human life. Terrible karma for both of them ‑‑ but especially for the careless teacher.

Death, and death. One would follow the other. Unless...

Blair continued to make his way in the dark, but his momentary panic was now replaced with reflection on his own behavior and his own duties; the self‑awareness this forced upon him caused him to turn his mind away from his own panic and fear.

He had been acting too much like a grad student lunging for the brass ring of a doctorate, fiercely protective of his find, jealously guarding his information. But this wasn't just about him and his work and getting published and being called Dr. Sandburg. He was Jim's "blessed protector" as much as Jim was his ‑‑ he had a responsibility to the Sentinel whose life he had saved more than once. And if he died and left his work half‑done, Jim would still need a Guide.

Poor Jim, he'd been so independent all his life, so used to being sole survivor, and now he was unable to function without a symbiote. That must have been a terrible shock for someone whose main coping function through an emotionally arid upbringing and a stressful life was self‑control. He was only now adjusting and even learning to enjoy the benefits of this dyad they had formed.

Sandburg firmly resolved that when he was released he would track down others doing Sentinel research and let them know about Jim. No more secrets from Blair's bizarre branch of academia. Surely there were two or three other loons out there in the world studying Sentinels; to them he would bequeath his notes, his theories, and the duty of teaching his test subject to use and control his abilities. Maybe one of them would win Blair's doctorate for him. Might even get along better with Jim than he did. Might even, finally, convince that bull‑headed son of a bitch that being a tribal protector was his true destiny...

The last light was gone. Blair was in blackness again. But the snakes were still on his shoulders, he could feel their bodies coiled and heavy. They hadn't left him, they'd just lost their luminescence. Good thing he hadn't panicked. And he should have expected a descent into darkness.

"The way is long. Some of it is very beautiful, and some of it is very dark and unpleasant. But it is the way you must go."

And Blair didn't even have the Silver Shoes or the Witch's Kiss to protect him. But he still had his snakes and the Minotaur in lieu of a scarecrow, a tin woodman and a lion.

Blair followed the Minotaur in this pitch‑black place by sound and sense ‑‑ he could feel the big creature's body heat, smell musk and bovine sweat, hear the deep whooshing breaths through its nostrils. He kept his hands to the damp walls, staying close behind the monster without actually touching him. One side‑effect to training a Sentinel was heightened awareness of all his own sensual input; the darkness wasn't the hindrance it would have been before, not with this other data coming in through his nose and ears and fingers.

Down they went, further and deeper down, the path winding one way, then another. Gradually the twining, twisting paths became a large descending spiral. A spiral that finally only had one path, one long curving corridor; Blair no longer felt other empty passages sweep past his fingertips as he followed his guide.

Not the Labyrinth any more, but the Spiral. And at its heart, what would he find?

Silence. Silence, ahead? But there was no more snorting. No body heat. No bovine smell.

"Hey, you there?" Blair asked, and wasn't really surprised when no one answered. The Minotaur and the Labyrinth belonged together; once the Labyrinth was changed to the Spiral and Blair didn't need the creature any more, it was gone. "Good luck, man," he said, feeling a pang of sadness. Perhaps the beast had been given hope by meeting someone who had treated him as an ally instead of as an enemy, and would finally free itself from its prison. Or perhaps it was the poor bastard's fate to be trapped forever in that Labyrinth. That was not his song to sing. He could only be grateful for its guidance, and continue to seek his own answers.

Answers which seemed to lie in a continuing downward spiral. The spiral to the center; the inverted ziggurat. Well, Blair was in good company ‑‑ and not just his faithful though lightless snakes. Surely, on some plane of existence, Inanna and Osiris and Herakles and Jesus and Black Elk and Sedna and Vishnu got together to trade their stories about their respective trips into the underworld.

And what was the Underworld, truly, except the very innermost core of one's self, an undertaking so perilous that only a shaman could conquer fear and make the journey?

The darkness he moved in became a physical thing, a thick blackness he moved against, like wading through molasses. Resistance. Something ahead, something frightening.

He stopped for a moment, afraid of fighting the heavy, resisting darkness of this inward spiral. His snakes were silent now, immobile on his shoulders, without light.

Escape. His only path out lay down, and ahead of him. Behind him was oblivion, where the torches and other snakes and his pistol and the Minotaur had gone.

He was in the belly of the fish. Salmon had to swim upstream, battering their bodies on the rocks, struggling to complete the cycle of life or die a futile, fruitless death.

He pushed ahead. It was harder to move; he pushed harder to get through the blackness that now closed tight around him like a giantfist, a hot giant fist that he tried to squeeze through. He had lost the walls of his spiral and now moved through this tightness horizontally, like a swimmer. (His snakes were no longer on his shoulders, but with the odd logic of dreams he knew without knowing why that they were hiding inside him.) It was like squeezing through a tight tunnel of hot flesh. It hurt, squeezing his head and his body as he pushed his way through to the center.

Was that ‑‑ music ‑‑ he heard ahead of him? Yes, yes ‑‑ there, very faint, in the distant darkness before him, were the gentle wailing sounds of a sitar, the instrumental piece from the Beatles' _White Album_. There was more; there were people ahead, love and belonging ahead, the promise of light and freedom ahead. _Green_ ahead.

Green? But, yes ‑‑ green. Green is...green is where...where...

Now he knew where he was and what he was remembering. He had to make his way into that new place, that place of light and love and music, that was where he belonged now, and he pushed his way through the cruel squeezing tunnel. The pain and the effort were so great he wanted to yell but he could not.

He was reaching the uttermost bottom level, the beginning place that was in the chamber he had to reach ahead. Push. Push. Oh, oh it hurt, it hurt so much, like a salmon battering its body raw on the rocks, forcing its way upstream.

Pain. Not his pain now. The tunnel's pain? It hurt the tunnel to squeeze him as much as it hurt him to be squeezed. But it was necessary.

Ahead. There. Ahead. The place he needed to be. Push. You're almost there.

His head was out of the tunnel. It was cold, cold after that hot squeezing tunnel. Light and love and belonging surrounded him ‑‑ and over all, George Harrison's sweet sitar music that had eased his mother's mind away from her birth pangs. Big hands held his head and cradled him as the rest of him squirmed free into that cold place. He knew whose hands they were, so big and strong: the hands of Sunflower Bakshi, the midwife who had brought Naomi Sandburg's baby into the Age of Aquarius. Finally he was all the way out of that horrible tunnel and he yelled in the cold, yelled for joy at being freed from the dark and the pain; the sound was a perfect counterpoint to the sitar. Then he was surrounded by warmth again ‑‑ but gentle warmth holding with love, not squeezing in pain. Warmth filled him, nourished him. Warmth on his forehead; his mother's first kiss for her son.

Others were here too; Naomi's friends, forming a circle of love around mother and child. A true family birth, as Sunflower's lover Greg and several other young men in the circle were all possible candidates for Blair's biological father. It was like being born into a pod of whales, where any bull might be the father of the calf but all of them protected the matriarch's child. He was grateful to them all for being there to welcome him, for making him know he was wanted and loved and blessed from the day of his birth. He wasn't a salmon, blindly following eons‑old instincts; he was a whale, wise and peaceful; smart enough, strong enough and brave enough to dive deep to seek what he needed.

But why had he thought of this place as _green_? There was nothing green here. Maybe "green" as in "new," but that didn't feel right either. Green is where...where...he almost had it, almost had an idea of what he was looking for. He turned from the warmth at his mother's breast, reaching for, for ‑‑

The light and warmth vanished. Everything was gone ‑‑ the light, the music, the people, the vast core of warmth and love that had held him close ‑‑ everything save himself. He was in silence and nothingness, a nothing so profound after that center of bliss and peace that he hovered unmoving, unthinking.

Nothing. Not even darkness or blackness existed, it was just ‑‑ nothing. Nothing, save himself, hovering in this nothingness at the center of things. No light, no thought, no sound, no sense. He was in the core ‑‑ but there was nothing here, and nothing but nothing. Nothing, save himself.

Then there was blackness. And light. Millions of lights, billions. Lights far and fast, lights scattered by the millions through the inky perfect blackness of nothing. They flew past him or he flew past them, amazed at this starry night. It was exactly like looking through the _Enterprise's_ view screen.

Then he realized that those weren't stars he saw, sprinkled by the millions like handfuls of fine sand or powdered sugar. Those were galaxies. Each tiny speck was a galaxy.

Those billions of galaxies kept flying past him. They flew past him until he was bored with the magnificent sight, and then long beyond that point. He might have slept a few times between staring at the flying‑past handfuls of powdered sugar.

Then one ahead seemed to get bigger. It became a bigger speck of light. Then it was the size of a star. It grew larger, developing the shape of the galactic swirl (again, the Spiral), looming up and over till it was bigger than the vastness he was in, it overcame him, overwhelmed him, became everything in his senses ‑‑

And stars flew past him. Stars this time, not galaxies, stars scattered like handfuls of sugar, powdered and granular. And they flew past, and they flew past. He slept and woke and slept and woke, and stars flew past.

One ahead grew bigger, brighter, yellow. Past a blue ice‑cinder and a beringed lump of matter and a smattering of dust and stones ‑- debris, all of it ‑‑ the yellow star grew bigger and brighter. Eagerly he reached for that bright yellow light, only to snarl in frustration when the biggest lump of chaff blocked his view and engulfed him. Then he was moving across the surface of that round smooth lump of chaff, brown and blue swirled with white. One largish brown‑and‑blue bit loomed up and around him, and he looked at land and ocean, watching brown become green. It loomed again, again, its tininess expanding before his eyes, seeing what his own size was in perspective even to this fleck of chaff.

A clump of buildings. Figures moving around the buildings. One brown building loomed; he approached, looked in through a window, went down a corridor, twisting and turning, ending before a door he knew. He opened the door, and he saw himself in this tiny room, hunched over his laptop, surrounded by his papers and books and artifacts. His other self in that room sat straight up at that moment, then turned around and looked into his own eyes.

A split‑second later he was in the place he'd begun, amid galaxies like white dust in the nothingness.

A scream came out of him, a cry, a roar that echoed and re‑echoed and reverberated. And even that was puny and invisible amid this vastness, a place so profound that the very molecules of his scream scattered into that abyss and were gone.

Then he was curled into a tight ball in a tiny room like a termite queen's chamber, only big enough to hold him. He curled tighter and tighter, his arms wrapped around his head trying to shut out that last image, that proof of his complete and utter insignificance in all of creation. He wanted to go back to that place of peace, the circle of love and light, the sweet music played to welcome him, the illusion that he was the center of all things...

The tiny chamber turned with him in the center, turned and turned. Hewas the hub of a wheel, the core of a spiral. He had finally found the center of himself ‑‑ and here he was, and here was nothing. He couldn't move. He had reached the center, and here he was trapped. The chamber was only as big as his curled self. There was no opening, nothing at this center place but himself. Even if there were an escape route he couldn't uncurl enough to use it.

He was sealed in stone, entombed, buried alive. He was all alone. Even his snakes were buried inside him, so deep they would never return to the light, their colors hidden from him. He was nothing in this nothingness of no light, no sound, no colors. No colors. Oh sweet Buddha, no colors at all ‑‑

Calm down, calm down, don't panic, you'll die, you'll die ‑‑

So what? What difference did it make if he lived or died? The only one affected would be Jim, and even then another Sentinel scholar could act as Guide for him. Jim would miss him, be sad for his friend's death, but when Jim finally died that was it, no more. A ripple, and then nothing: _Blair Sandburg was here_. All this struggle and worry over nothing. Everything he knew was nothing, everything he'd ever experienced was nothing. The very world he lived on was nothing, a fleck of chaff near a speck of dust in a microscopic spiral amid billions. Snap out of this trance, take deep breaths, choke and die. Get this futile struggle over with.

In his despair and his pain, his self-pity and his fear, he sobbed once. A single tear stung one eye, emerged and fell. It fell in a long shiny filament, an impossibly‑thin string. Shiny in this nothingness, this tiny thread.

There was a tiny black spider at the end of that shiny silver thread.

Such a tiny little spider, hanging from the silver spider‑thread that had fallen from his eye. He stared, his amazement overcoming his self‑pity, as the tiny creature descended out of sight in this chamber of nothingness. The thread was still there, a gossamer wisp swaying gently from the corner of his eye.

A spider. A spider left this place by walking on that gossamer thread.

There was a Japanese story about a wicked man who'd gone to Hell. The man had been given one chance of salvation, based on the only good deed he'd done in his entire miserable life ‑‑ he'd once refrained from stepping on a spider. Because of that, the gods had allowed a single spider's strand to drop into Hell so that the man could use it to climb out of the abyss.

In Africa, Spider was the Trickster. To the Native Americans of the Southwest, Spider was the grandmother at her loom, at the center of the universe. And the universe was a spiraled circle, like a spider's web.

He was at the center of a spiraled circle. He was the Trickster to Jim's Warrior. His own inadequacies had put him in this fearful place of isolation and insignificance, a terrible Hell. But his own fear ‑‑ the fear that had created the tear ‑‑ had summoned yet another animal helper, and had produced his own single chance at escaping.

The gossamer strand looked as if a breath would destroy it. But it was just as thick as the hair‑fine chain that bound Fenris Wolf to the base of Yggdrasil, the thread that was the only barrier from Chaos running free in the world. Fenris could and did shatter every other chain made to hold him ‑‑ but it was the magic thread that had finally bound him.

He began to reach both hands out to take hold of the thread, then stopped. His hands were orange and white. Hero ‑‑ reach out and grab. And a Hero's weight would snap that thread.

In his mind, another snake reared before him, blue and green. But now feathers adorned Green‑hood's neck, as if it was Quetzlcoatl. One big white downy feather drifted from the snake's ruff, swaying on the way down, and rested on a scale before him.

A scale. A feather.

He understood, and bowed his head, holding still.

Without flinching he looked at every evil thing he'd done in his life, all the wrongs and abuses he'd inflicted. Petty thefts as a child, his teenage drug use, his pride, every act of selfishness, every lie he had ever told or implied, every girl he'd deceived into thinking she was his only interest, his pleasure at others' misfortunes, everything he could have done to help other people and did not. It was a long and impressive list ‑‑ many many small weights upon the scale, rather than one great and terrible burden such as murder, but together they were still formidable.

He went through his childhood misdeeds, everything that had made him blush with shame. He accepted them for what they were and forgave his younger self for all the missteps he'd taken on his way to becoming an adult. His drug indulgences (and they were his own, not his mother's) he understood for their true wrong, as abuses of his own mental and physical health. Most of the rest, his sexual deceptions included, all had his pride at the root of the problem. When he realized what had triggered this soul‑searching ‑‑ how arrogant of him, to be grief‑stricken because he wasn't the center of the universe, as he'd been in infancy! ‑‑ he laughed out loud at that tiny, arrogant flea.

He thought of Jim, doing his best at a stressful, exacting job even as he dealt with the added burden of unwanted physical abilities that hindered as much as they helped, and which made him dependent upon others. Jim was not only learning, he even considered his exacting, pride‑filled teacher to be his friend. He was overcome by a sense of his own pettiness and admiration for his friend. If Jim could learn how to change his life, difficult and slow as such changes always had to be, the least he could do was to be as steadfast to his student as that student was loyal to him, imperfections and all...

The feather still hovered before him, white and downy, lying on the plate of the scale. But now he was on the other plate. Both he and the feather sat in the scale, and the plates were even, perfectly aligned. He had the right to proceed.

Serene, he took hold of the gossamer spider‑thread with sureness of purpose. The end fell away from his eye and was now the end of the line. Feather‑light as a virtuous Egyptian's heart, he pulled himself along the strand, leaving his prison. He did not hurry and he did not worry. Green. Green is where...where... He would understand green, and then he would know what to do.

A slight pain in his chest meant nothing as he climbed. Ah, the air must be gone from the safe. It was nothing to worry about. He would soon be...

The thread vanished from his hands and he stood free. He stood in a corridor made of stone, lit by torches gripped in sconces formed by human hands. Even as he looked, the hallway branched off into 5 or 6 hallways and from there branched again and again, curving and twisting into an infinite number of side‑halls, corridors and paths.

He had come back to the beginning. He was as he'd been when he'd begun this dream‑journey. The snakes were gone now. He was still trapped in the Labyrinth. But now he had no guides, and his air was gone. His feather‑light heart throbbed in pain.

Green, if he could only understand _green_ he could die with a serene heart, understanding what this had all been about, all of it ‑‑ not free of pain, of course, just, just not for nothing, not ‑‑

 No, no, tamp them down, back into the subconscious, don't think about ‑‑ no, no despair, no fear, don't, don't ‑‑!

But his desperation, his fear of useless, unremembered death completed the job even the view of his place in the universe could not do.

His fear boiled up from the floor of the maze all around him, grinning vilely. They were golden and beautiful and vicious, with teeth and claws and horns all over their brilliant bodies.

His hand scrabbled frantically at his empty holster. It was for precisely this reason that he'd tossed the gun before it became a temptation. He knew what these things were.

 _Demons_ , his drugged mind had shouted in horror once, monsters of gold, reaching for him, all claws and teeth, trying to drag him down into hell, into the place they'd come from.

He'd seen them twice before. The first time was in high school, during his first experience with acid. He'd wanted to achieve the clarity he'd heard about, but instead had slid into a nightmare that hadn't wanted to end, where his friends had turned into horned, fanged creatures trying to rip him apart and drag him into Hell. His druggie pals, better caretakers than the cops had been years later, had recognized the symptoms and had kept him quiet and safe in a corner until he'd come down off the trip. Naomi had collected her dazed son and had had a long talk with him after he'd sobered up, letting him know exactly how close he'd come to permanently damaging himself and why she kept herself to pot; she'd seen the damage LSD had done to her former lover Timothy Leary and was grateful her son had been spared greater horrors.

Under the LSD his demons had only been bloodied, warty‑skinned beasts. But when he'd accidentally ingested an overdose of Golden he'd seen the demons again, but now wearing the faces and names of his attackers from Alconte to Zeller ‑‑ everyone who'd ever shoved the cold end of a gun against him. The Golden had given these faces a hideous beauty. He'd stared at the beautiful monsters even as they'd tried to drag him under and make him one of them ‑‑ he'd been so terrified and attracted by their beautiful evil that he'd fired at them, frantic to drive them back. The biggest demon had finally coaxed him into relinquishing the gun and had pulled him down into strong and surprisingly gentle arms. Had to have been Jim.

They were back, every one of them, and now they included Roswell, the one who'd smiled at him as he'd slammed the vault door on his light and air. Every last Golden one of them, ready to drag him down and make him golden too. They reached their long claws to him.

But in that instant he had the image in his mind of the cobra rearing up before him, or as part of him, or he himself as the cobra, hissing at the encroaching golden demons, flaring its wide green hood ‑‑

_Green!_

He glared triumphantly at the golden beasts.

He had it. He had it!

They'd never make him gold. He was green. He was green! Green as the deepest Peruvian jade, green as the heart of the jungle. He was green, and green was him.

The colors of the directions, in Mayan theology. North was white, south was yellow, east was red, west was black, all branching from the same place ‑‑ and that central place, which was wherever you were at any moment, was always, always, green.

He wasn't one of them, and he'd never be them, those golden creatures who could do such horrible things to themselves and others. He was green; he knew where he was, and who he was. He looked into their hate‑contorted features, and he was filled with pity for them.

They howled and gibbered, full of hate, and raised their claws to tear and destroy him. Destruction ‑‑ it was all the gold demons knew how to do.

But he knew who he was and where he was. He was not merely himself, and he was not a destroyer. He was making his tiny corner of the world a little better by teaching an extraordinarily‑gifted man how to use his gifts to help other people. Such a tiny, tiny corner of the universe ‑‑ but a part of the vast Spiral of stars in which he lived was a better place because of him, his pupil who was also his friend, and his work.

He looked down at himself and saw long strong horse's legs. He looked behind himself and saw a horse's back and rump, a horse's tail switching over his back legs. In one hand was a coiled scroll of parchment, at the top of which could be read: "Manifestations of Pre‑Hispanic Peruvian Sentinel Hypersenses and Their Functionality in a Contemporary Urban Environment."

He knew who he was. The Greek myths again. He was Chiron, the centaur who taught the heroes ‑‑ unlike all the other half‑horse brutes, a wise and peaceful creature.

A gun appeared in his other hand, an Uzi, as the demons rushed at him, cackling.

Mow them down, stop them! the orange‑and‑white part of him shouted in panic.

Chiron had only held one weapon, once ‑‑ Hercules' poisoned arrow ‑‑ and it had accidentally killed the gentle teacher. The last time Blair had held a gun, he'd nearly killed every cop in the Cascade PD, and Jim would have been the first to die.

Scornful, Blair tossed the Uzi into the nothingness behind him and faced his enemies, holding only his scroll.

The demons snarled and threw a ball of fire at him. Instinctively he threw up one hand to shield himself, and the ball of fire struck the scroll. The parchment caught and went up in his fist in a puff of flame.

His dissertation, his life's work ‑‑

He smiled, shook his hand free of the clinging ash, closed his fist, and ne claw reaching for him. Blair remembered the Minotaur, and snorted in contempt; the blast from his nostrils blew Lash away from him, rolling over and over, howling in fear.

Galileo leaped at him, one clawed hand holding a detonator. Blair grinned and stomped a hole in the floor with one hoof. The demon pitched down the shaft beneath the hole, yelling.

They continued to rush him ‑‑ and he continued to deflect them, facing them down and defeating them without striking a single blow. One by one, they disappeared, shrieking and howling in rage at their defeat.

Roswell, the one who'd locked him in the safe, was the last one, making one final rush at him, his clawed hands high to split him in two. Blair clapped his left hand to his hip where, despite his reliving his own birth, traveling through the universe, and now being a horse from the waist down, the bullwhip still lay coiled and ready. He pulled it free. But instead of snapping it at his attacker, he simply turned itto face Roswell as it was, a coil of braided leather, a circle of intertwined thongs in a long inner spiral.

It was like waving a cross before a vampire. The last of the golden demons shrieked at the appearance of the Spiraled Labyrinth, the sacred circle that led to the core of knowledge, and vanished.

Blair was in his human form again, alone again in the Labyrinth. He was in great pain. He had to find his way out alone.

He was still holding the coiled whip before him. He stared at it, noting the elaborate braid of the leather lash, the fine‑grained leather thongs, the one green thong that wound around and in and out of the other thongs ‑‑

Blair grinned (he was in too much pain to laugh). Like the Silver Shoes, his means of returning home had been with him all along.

A Labyrinth that spiraled upward, to free himself of his inward trance. So, start at the beginning, where the thong emerged from the handle. Green bypassed two thongs, then turned to the left. Blair walked past two passages, and turned down the next left passage.

He paced the corridor slowly and surely, ignoring the pain beating at his chest as he'd scorned the demons and their claws. He followed the path and the pattern of the green thong in the whip, turning in and out of corridors, the entire maze spiraling toward a focal point. Don't run, don't panic ‑‑ the air is gone from the chamber, Jim is out there fighting the bad guys like a mad man, he knows you're long past the time for breathable air. Let Jim be furious and terrified for both of you. Be calm and peaceful for both of you.

Past the next two openings, left down the third. Right immediately. Two openings, then a right. One opening, then a left, spiraling upward like the tapering leather of the whip. Pace the Spiral Path, returning outward, return with courage, with knowledge, with counsel, with wisdom, with understanding, with piety, and with awe of the Power that created the great Spirals of galaxies and scattered them like dust in the vast nothingness. Return to continue your work.

The coiled whip shifted in his hand, became a wheel, an eight‑spoked wheel with a green hub. Then it was a coiled bullwhip again. Then the eight‑spoked Wheel. Then the upward Spiral.

He knew what the wheel was, and why it was fading in and out with the bullwhip. That was the Great Wheel of Transmigrations. Souls returned to that wheel by one of the eight paths, to be reborn into a new life. He was on the edge then, between living and dying. Was he to die and return to the Wheel? Or was he to return to the land of the living via the Spiral, with his knowledge of himself?

The galaxies were scattered like dust ‑‑ but he was green. Spokes flew from him to reach those galaxies, eight spokes. He was life, love, continuation; he, and the billions that made life, tiny though they were, were the hub of the Wheel, the core of the Spiral. They were green. The Spiral, the Wheel ‑‑ life, death ‑‑ were one. Either way was his path. His path was his path. He knew who he was and where he was; wherever his path led him was the right way.

Serene and sure of himself, beyond pain or panic or mortal fear, he walked and turned, and came before a wall that ended the maze. He was at the very end of his whip, which was six thongs frayed at the tip, bent in odd directions.

He had to braid the thongs back together to make the very tip of the Spiral perfect. Move the thongs back the right way. This one in; that one out, just to there. That other one, round this way. In and out. Out, in, out, for that one.

Carefully, mindfully, with the needed speed and with no haste whatever, Blair braided the loose tips of the whip to form a perfect point. Push that one back, just there, pull this one forward here. And, this last one, twist it just a little, and ‑‑

The last thong slid into place.

The wall opened like a mouth, exhaling cold over him. Air. Light. Sound. Movement.

Blair smiled, took a deep, deep breath of fresh clean air, and flowed out of that mouth like a newborn from the womb.

 * * *

He was lying on the ground. He wished his hands were untied, but one couldn't have everything. A lot of noise, a lot of thumping. Probably a fight, Jim was always getting into fights.

Breathe deep, exhale the stale air out of your lungs and body, bring back the oxygen to stir your blood back into wakefulness from the trance. Cough, hard, get rid of that carbon dioxide infiltrating your brain and body, suck in the fresh air. Oh, the pain! That pain is so good, it's the blood coming back to your numbed, cramped body, rich bright red blood bringing oxygen for every starved cell, you can almost hear those billions of microscopic cheers at your victory over the forces of evil. Billions of cells, scattered into nothingness like a handful of dust, to produce him; it was amazing. What great Entity did the billions of galaxies form?

The thumping stopped. His face was warm. Warm breath on his face. Big warm callused hands on his cheeks. A voice, broken and soft,whispering his names, all of them; Sandburg, Blair, Chief, buddy. God? Dear God? No, those two weren't his names. He opened his eyes.

Blue. Blue was where Jim was. Bright blue. Bright, wet blue. Wet? Two wet streaks down Jim's dusty cheeks. Jim was talking. Saying he was dead? No, saying he _should_ be dead, should have been dead an hour and a half ago, only ten minutes of air in that vault.

"I couldn't hear your heart or your breathing," Jim whispered, eyes naked, hands so warm on his face. "Thought I'd lost you, Chief."

But how could he be lost? He knew where he was, he knew who he was. He knew he belonged right where he was.

His hands were free again; the pain started up in them too as the blood rushed to the site. He reached one hand up, painful as it was, to pat Jim's hand; air hissed out of his mouth, forming a word. "Sss...sokay." He wanted to apologize for frightening his friend; he wanted to tell Jim he wouldn't be left Guide‑less even if Blair walked the turning Wheel instead of the outward Spiral. He'd find a Guide for Jim, one with hooves and a flea‑switching tail to combat the golden demons out there... Oh, he couldn't put it into words yet; he'd sleep now, a regular doze with plenty of air now that he was free, and then everything would sort itself out into language he could speak in this world outside.

People in white coats were bringing a stretcher over. Oh, it would be so good to stretch out again. And he had to think of contacting a replacement, another Guide for Jim. Someone he could trust to do the work right, to support Jim the right way... Jim was supporting him, helping him onto the stretcher, that was kind of him, he really ought to have clambered on himself but he was still a little numb from his squat in the safe. Jim looked a lot better. Maybe he knew his plans.

* * *

Detective James Ellison watched as his friend was settled onto the stretcher and a mask fitted over his mouth and nose. But it was purely a precautionary measure. Sandburg had been lucid, his eyes clear andsharp. He'd touched Jim with a definitive purpose, had formed a distinct word. No sign of brain damage.

Jake Roswell was shouting in the background, incoherent with hysteria and impotent fury, as he was being led away by the uniforms. Oblivious to the background noise, Jim sat back, staring at the open safe, and shook. He couldn't stop. He was zoning out. All that filled his mind was the lead in his stomach the instant he'd broken into the room, seen the size of Blair's tomb, heard nothing from within, and his one thought _He's been dead for an hour_ had instantly turned every atom of his rage against Roswell, wanting only to hurt the man forever before the cops peeled them apart ‑‑

A hand. A hand on his shoulder, mumbling. Another voice, overriding voices raised in protest. Mumbling. Concentrate? He was all right? He was safe? Jim blinked, and was free of the zone‑out.

Blair's eyes held him steady, drawing him out of the abyss, even from a stretcher; his voice giving him a path to follow ‑‑ "It's okay, 'sall right, come on, come out, come to me." It was easier today, he knew the way better now. How ‑‑?

Simon's voice said something reassuring, and the paramedics carried Blair past and to the waiting ambulance. Then it was Simon's hand on Jim's shoulder. He was shaking too; he said nothing more.

Both men stared at the safe that had opened on its own in the middle of Jim's fight with Roswell. The door stood open as it had when it had disgorged Blair. Its six bolts were shot back; its six tumblers perfectly aligned in the only sequence that would open the airtight chamber door. No one had touched the lock.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 1996 or 1997 because I’d gotten tired of the “poor little victim Blair” genre that was so prevalent in Sentinel fanfic at the time. (This was also before I'd stopped using appropriation of First Nations mythology to tell stories.)


End file.
